Completed "Week in the Life" Album (monthly make)

Well, I did it! I buckled down and completed the journaling and embellishments to finish my "Week in the Life" photo journaling project.  You can see the blank book at this link; the cover is above, and the completed book looks like this:

A typical day looks like this:

In the top photo, there's a full 6x6 red page on the left, followed by two dark brown 6x2 inch flaps, to which I added pictures, matted with light brown paper. The second picture shows the page created using the two flaps, and the third picture shows a full 6x6 red page on the right and a flap page on the left (with the photo added).  This gave me plenty of room to add pictures and journaling.  Here's two other pages I liked:

I kept the embellishments very simple.  I mainly used two different Close to My Heart stamp sets.  One had the date journaling stamp that I used on my cover and for each day (you can see the Monday and Tuesday ones above).  The other had a variety of stamps (the "time to" one;  a "life is good" and "good day" ticket; the phrase "follow your dreams"' and a swirl). I used these throughout the album.  I also supplemented with the "memoir" and "write your own story" stamps you can see on the cover.
Overall, I'm really happy with the album. It really chronicles a week in my life and covers my work, family and creative pursuits pretty well. I've noticed that I've taken many fewer pictures this year, so I'm really glad to have this album to really record the nitty gritty of our lives.  Plus, I'm going to count this as my monthly make for May (just in the nick of time)!
Did you do Week in the Life?  Did you complete your album?

My Week in the Life Plan

I've been participating in a photography and scrapbooking project called "A Week in the Life." During this past week, I took lots of photographs each day to chronicle my life as it is right now. The next step in the project is to scrapbook the photographs.  I'm going to use the 6x6 handmade album above.
Last time I did WITL was in 2008, and I used an 8x8 album:

I had a two-page spread for each weekday with a Tim Holtz quote and circular date stamp.  The left page featured one 4x6 photo and journaling.  The right hand side featured a collage of four pictures. Here's a couple samples

I also had filler pages in between the days, which covered topics. As an example, here are pages on pets and mornings:

I was happy with how this worked, so I'm following a similar plan this year. I refuse to buy a new album (as I have several in my stash). The only 8x8's I have are pink and not appealing to me. So, I'm going with the 6x6 featured above.  Some of the pages have flaps inside, and I'll use these for the daily pages:

This will allow me to feature four photographs per day, as well as plenty of journaling.
There's also simple two page spreads (alternating with the flapped pages).

I'll use these for filler pages on certain topics (one for Paul, Henry, Clara certainly; probably one for the gym; one for pets and my walk to work). I took fewer pictures this year, so I think this album will be big enough.  I will order my pictures today or tomorrow and start on building the foundation to make it easy to put them in when they arrive.  I know from experience that keeping it simple and doing it quickly is the key to completing this project.  
If you've done WITL before or are doing it this year, I'd love to hear how you scrap your WITL photos.

WITL: Mundane Monday and Two-Step Tuesday

I'm working on a photography/scrapbooking project called "A Week in the Life," documenting, well, a typical week in my life. For more details, see Ali Edwards' post here.
My Monday was pretty mundane. I spend a lot of time letting this little one in and out (I think she needs a trip to the groomers again soon):

Paul and I took Henry's car in to get his sub-woofers fixed (he got these for Christmas and they've never quite worked right) and then grabbed lunch at an Indian food place nearby:

Back home, I puttered at my art desk and then fell asleep watching the S.F. Giants play a baseball double-header. Henry came home in time to meet with his SAT tutor.

And that was about it. Clara went to swimming, but Paul took her, so I've got no pictures from it (might have to work on that).
Tuesday was a bit more interesting.  I started off the day at the gym.  We did "assessments" (ran a mile for time and held a plank for as long as we could). I was slower and weaker than usual, but I stuck with it.

Then it was off to work. You can see the photographs about that part of my day in yesterday's post by clicking here.  Drove over to San Bruno to watch Henry play baseball:

The boys lost, but a group of us went to a great Mexican Restaurant afterwards (Don Pico). Spending time with the parents is a highlight of the baseball season for me:

A few notes and observations on this project:
1. I'm taking most of my pictures with my a 50 mm fixed lens and my old camera (Nikon D50) because the 50mm is so small and compact and has such nice resolution, but it won't autofocus on my new camera (D5100), and post-processing is much easier with the old camera software so far. Given the volume of photos for this project, I decided to go old school. But it makes me acutely aware that I need to put some time into mastering my new camera and figure out a good post processing flow.
2. This year's project is much more about me and much less about the kids than last time I did it (four years ago; 9/26-10/02/08). I guess that's representative of my life as well.
3. I spend a lot of time with Henry and not so much with Clara - again representative of my life and the state of family relationships at this time.
4. I spend a lot of time with a certain local group of friends - if you look closely, you'll see the same group at the gym and at the baseball field. I'll be back at the baseball field with them again this week and at our book group meeting, as well as an auction fundraiser. We joke that the Coast is actually like a really big house, and we all live together. It definitely feels that way this week.  I consider it a blessing.
For those doing A Week in the Life, what have you started to realize about your life or the project so far?

A Week in the Life: My Weekend

I started a photography/scrapbook project called A Week in the Life on Saturday, and here's an assortment of photos from the weekend.  On Saturday, Gypsy watched with great apprehension as I packed up to take Henry off to a soccer tournament in Manteca, Ca.  She hates it when we leave .

It was brutally hot, so the fans hung out under tents (my group was under the blue Adidas tent). The boys won both games, and Henry scored a goal. I spent most of my time trying to film the game. I hope to figure out how to create videos. If so, I'll post one later.
Meanwhile, Paul spent time at home working in the garden.  He pulled out the bulbs, planted some flowers and added to the herb garden:

Clara's weekend is summed up with one photograph:

She spent Saturday working on homework (symbolized by her backpack) and then got all dressed up to go to a Quincenera (represented by the high heels). She wouldn't let me take a picture of her when she got home all dressed up. In fact, "wouldn't let me take a picture of them" will probably be a theme of the "Week in a Life." Sigh.
Sunday was quiet.  I went to yoga:

I should have taken a picture of the Farmer's Market I stopped by on my way out of yoga, but I forgot. At home, things were pretty quiet.  Paul and I worked on our travel plans for the summer, specifically the week we will spend in Barcelona.  The kids slept late, then occupied themselves with electronics. Here's Henry playing Xbox and the cat lazying about:

So that was our weekend. I'd love some suggestions for how to get cooperation from family members to get their pictures for this project.  I'll do a mid-week post with more scenes from my week.

Mosaic Butterfly Mini Album (March Monthly Make)

I'm trying to work my way through a variety of project kits I have purchased over the years, so I joined the Felt Fairy's Monthly Make Project.  For March, I decided to make a cute little mini-album from Club Scrap.

You start with one piece of 12x12 printed paper, which you fold, cut, and fold again until it turns into an accordion album.  The paper had a garden theme, in purple and greens.

The project kit left the cover design up to the artist, so I decided to make some mosaic butterflies using this fabulous technique featured on Tim Holtz's blog.

While I was playing, I made two extras.  I'm keeping this red one:

But I'm sending this purple one to Deb for her Butterfly Project (read more here). While you're at it, you might want to check out my cousin Irene's wonderful post about the Project, her visit to the Houston Museum and her fabulous stained glass butterflies (click here to read it).

In making the butterflies, I followed Tim's instructions pretty closely, although I just traced the butterflies onto grungeboard because I don't have any of the dies.  I then cut a piece of wonder tape around the right size, attached it to the grungeboard and trimmed. I used liquid platinum embossing powder instead of cement. I also used highly textured pieces of paper for my mosaic (most of them were extra backgrounds made in technique classes).  I love how they turned out.
Have you tried Tim's technique yet? Made any butterflies? Doing the Monthly Make? If so, feel free to add a link, and I'll be sure and stop by.